


Unknown Unknown

by JohnAmendAll



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 20:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3543425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five seconds after 'Titanic' hit London, something went wrong with Max Capricorn's plan. Maybe Earth wasn't the best choice of planet to hit, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unknown Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the 'Turn Left' alternate timeline.

When Max Capricorn had planned the starship _Titanic_ 's crash, he'd chosen London as his target with some care. In order to devastate the planet's biosphere, the ship's reactors would need to detonate at the right distance from the sea. Too far away, and the chain reaction would burn itself out rather than sweep over the planet's surface. Too close, and the explosion might throw the wreck of the starship back into space before the reaction even got going. Taking all those factors into account, London had clearly been the best bet. 

From his impregnable lifepod, he watched the ring of plasma spread across London, reducing everything it touched to dust and ashes. Sensors tracked its progress, comparing the measured reactions with those his computer projected. 

About five seconds after impact, reality diverged markedly from the predictions. The shockwave sped on, smashing people and buildings alike; the towering mushroom cloud continued to build over the impact point. But the chain reaction had faltered. Drained of energy, it flickered and faded. Fire raced up the Thames as far as Oxford, and the banks of the river to East and West were reduced to radioactive glass, but that was the reaction's last gasp. Capricorn scarcely had time to register the deviation before the planet-devouring inferno had sputtered and completely died. 

_Sabotage_ was his first thought, once he had played back the logs, and he swore vengeance on whoever had ruined his plan to bring down the company that had once been his. But, once he took a second look at the logs, he revised that conclusion. There had been no problem with the _Titanic_ or its flight path. The reaction had behaved exactly as expected, until its expanding wavefront had touched something. Something that had poisoned it, draining it of the energy that would have carried it out to the sea and over the world. 

The sensors in the lifepod were good, but the place where the reaction had been poisoned was at the limit of their range. When Capricorn aimed them at the site, all he saw was the physical evidence that the reaction had indeed stopped. Inside the circle centred on the impact point of the _Titanic_ : blackened, lifeless ash. Outside: toppled buildings, upturned cars, decaying corpses, fallen masonry. There was nothing at the boundary to show why the reaction had chosen to stop there. 

For several days Capricorn spent most of his waking hours scanning the edge of the devastated area. Everywhere, he saw the same picture: black ash giving way to devastation and rubble. Nowhere could he find the slightest clue as to who or what had hobbled his master plan. Nightly, he vowed to leave no stone unturned in tracking down the person who had dared to ruin his perfect plan for vengeance. In a few more days, the radiation would have decreased enough for a rescue ship to retrieve his capsule. With that ship's power at his disposal, tracking down the perpetrator would be a far simpler task. 

In the meantime, he concentrated on the place where the reaction had first faltered. Human cleanup crews were now beginning to penetrate to the area, and the capsule was able to tap into their cameras. Slim as the chance was, one of these crews might just turn up the vital evidence. 

The day before the rescue ship was due to arrive, the evidence showed up. 

Capricorn had been watching as a gang of workers in radiation suits poked through the ruins of what must once have been a large house, just on the edge of the burned circle. The camera turned this way and that, recording broken beams, shattered brickwork, smashed floors. Then, just at the edge of the shot, a stone wing. Whoever was operating the camera must have noticed, because they briefly turned to capture the image: a statue of an angel, miraculously undamaged, its hands over its eyes. 

The camera turned away, swung back briefly, then resumed its trek through the ruins. In that last glimpse, though, the statue's position had somehow changed. Its head had turned slightly, just enough to see past its raised hands, and it was looking at the camera. Looking at _him_. 

Capricorn rewound and replayed those few seconds of video a dozen times, always with the same result. Between its first and second appearance, the statue's head was unquestionably at a different angle. 

_There's a statue that can move,_ he reasoned. _And it's just where the reaction failed. That's two inexplicable things in the same place. That can't be a coincidence._

He switched the video off. Or rather, he tried to. The last image it had shown — the freeze-frame of the statue looking at him — remained stubbornly on the screen. On a smaller screen to his right, the local area scanner reported four human-sized objects in close proximity to the capsule. Nothing should have been able to survive in the poisoned, radioactive desert out there without metre-thick lead shielding, but the scanner stubbornly reported them, closer with each sensor sweep. 

The capsule was impregnable against all possible outside influences: not only radiation, pressure, fire and blast, but also sound. Nevertheless, as Capricorn looked back to the main screen and saw the image of the angel, its mouth now open and revealing rows of pointed teeth, the terrifying sound of metal buckling under impossible force came to his ears. 

When the rescue ship arrived the following day, they found the lifepod. Its hatch hung open; its interior was empty. Every joule of energy had been drained from its circuits, and there was no sign whatsoever of Max Capricorn. The rescue ship's captain — a hardened enforcer who'd been involved with the less legitimate side of Capricorn's business ventures for years — was sufficiently shaken to compare the pod to the husk of a fruit, sucked dry and discarded. 

They took the pod back with them, anyway, to back up their story should anyone ask awkward questions. And — not that they knew it — four slightly less hungry Weeping Angels.


End file.
